


Aziraphale's Seven Deadly Sins

by anactoriatalksback



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Body Worship, First Kiss, Footnote abuse, M/M, References to blow-jobs, Snarking about Adam (First Man not Antichrist), The chapter on Lust is like ... perversely unsmutty, Unless you're into Crowley watching Aziraphale eat, kind of, references to rimming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-07-27 04:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20039665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: Seven stand-alone vignettes on Aziraphale working his way through the Seven Deadly Sins.





	1. Lust

It begins quite suddenly.

Well, that’s a lie. Or at least, not _quite_ true[1].

It begins, as is appropriate, in a garden.

The Garden sparkles, fresh and ripe, profligate with life. It responds eagerly to tending, of which it needs so little that Aziraphale suspects the honeysuckle and rose only wilt on occasion, when they remember, so Adam feels like he has something to do.

He’s stolid, the First Man. Stoic and incurious. He moves through the garden complacently, irreflectively. He was put on Earth and the Garden was meant for him. God’s in Her Heaven. All’s right with the world.

Of course it is. Whyever not?

‘Ssssseems a bit of a thickie,’ says a voice beside him.

Aziraphale glances down at the ground. The Serpent, gleaming an oily black.

‘All this for him to enjoy,’ continues the voice, ‘You’d think he’d want to explore, wouldn’t you? Experiment. Dissscover. And nothing. Just ssssitsss there. Like a lump.’

Aziraphale says nothing. He tells himself that his agreement only reflects a measured assessment of the First Man’s ingratitude for Her fertile invention.

‘Does he even enjoy anything?’ says the Serpent. ‘Have you once – even once – seen him crack a ssssmile?’

‘He is overcome,’ says Aziraphale, ‘with the magnificence of Her creation.’

The Serpent says nothing, and manages to pack quite a lot into that nothing. The two of them turn to stare at the First Man, who is scratching his rear end.

Aziraphale likes to think the Serpent hasn’t heard him sniff[2].

‘What are you up to?’ says Aziraphale, when the silence threatens to turn companionable. ‘I must warn you, demon, if you try to lure him into – into dissatisfaction, I will - ’

The Serpent snorts. Aziraphale’s not entirely sure how – its nose doesn’t seem to be designed for the manoeuvre – but it definitely manages it. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ it says. ‘Lure the Lump? Into what? He doesn’t want anything, or do anything, or think about anything. He’s like you lot.’

Aziraphale bristles before he can stop himself. ‘He was created in Her image,’ he says primly.

‘Oh, for Hell’s sssake,’ says the Serpent, and slithers off. Aziraphale doesn’t follow him.

The First Man scratches his arse again. At least, thinks Aziraphale sourly, he seems to take some interest in _that_.

The First Woman is better, thinks Aziraphale. She looks, she smells, she touches. Her eyes linger and dart back again. Her head is cocked as if to listen. Always listening. She walks around the Garden – not the First Man’s dutiful measured watchman’s pace, but tripping and keen.

‘I like _her_,’ says the Serpent. ‘She should just ssscrap the other one.’

‘She?’ says Aziraphale, inclining his head towards Eve.

‘No,’ sighs the Serpent. ‘_She_. Her. The Big I Am.’

‘Oh,’ says Aziraphale. ‘It – She loves all Her creations, I’m sure she wouldn’t - ’

‘The first one’s allowed to be wonky,’ says the Serpent, ignoring Aziraphale, ‘Bit ssskew-whiff. Chef’s favour, and all that. Ingredients are perfectly good. She could just ssscoff him quietly. Nobody’d have to know.’

‘Scoff?’ says Aziraphale.

‘Eat,’ says the Serpent. ‘Just wolf him down. Unhinge Her jaw. I’ll show Her how if She doesn’t know.’

He’s not going to laugh, Aziraphale tells himself. The Serpent’s wicked forked[3] tongue will not lure Aziraphale into ribaldry at the expense of Her crowning creations. He does not find the image of Her swallowing Her phlegmatic son remotely amusing. Or the thought of Her belching and murmuring ‘Excuse Me.’ As She daintily wipes Her lip.

‘Not that She would, anyway,’ continues the Serpent. ‘Look at him. He’s probably indigestible.’

And Aziraphale can’t help it. He laughs, and he can no more hold it back than he could – well, Aziraphale can do most things on this little blue planet, as it turns out. He’s been instructed in the mechanics – tides, gravity and so forth – but he’s never been told they apply to him. He could make every rose in the Garden vanish with a snap of his fingers. Make the fireflies spell out his own secret name. Turn every blade of grass gold. Anything he wants.

Except, apparently, keep a straight face at the present time.

He can’t say how long he laughs, but when he stops, hand pressed to his mouth as if to physically force the unseemly bubble back, the Serpent’s closer. Aziraphale can feel him coiled about his legs, cool underneath the warmth of his scales. Sleekly gleaming, sure of himself.

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, coughing and straightening. ‘Well.’

The Serpent withdraws. Aziraphale finds himself wondering about the shift and murmur of his scales as he moves.

He finds, afterwards, that the Serpent found Eve considerably easier to talk to.

Afterwards, her bright-eyed curiosity has a febrile, unwholesome shadow. The spectre of shame transforms her eager venturesomeness. She’s frightened, now, sometimes, sometimes titillated with the prospect of discovery and punishment. But she’s learning to hide. Maybe even to take pleasure in hiding.

‘Was it worth it?’ Aziraphale asks the Serpent (Crawly, he says his name is). He means it as a reproach.

Crawly tilts his head. He doesn’t look sorry, precisely, but he isn’t gloating either. ‘Worth it for whom?’ he asks.

Aziraphale considers this question. ‘They must be pleased with you,’ he says by way of answer. ‘Down there.’

Crawly shrugs. It’s an extravagant motion from someone who hasn’t quite gotten the hang of shoulders. ‘I did all right,’ he says. ‘But she’d have done it anyway.’

Aziraphale looks sharply at Crawly. ‘You tempted her to - ’

‘Yes, yes,’ says Crawly, waving a hand. ‘I slithered, I whispered, I did what I was told to, I did all right. But she’d have gotten there in the end. With or without me.’ He gives Aziraphale a sidelong look. ‘She was always more wide awake than he was, you know.’

‘He was content,’ says Aziraphale, and looks straight ahead of him.

Crawly snorts, and this time he has the equipment to do the sound justice. ‘He would be.’

There’s another silence. This time there’s no danger at all of it turning companionable.

‘Did you try them?’ says Crawly.

‘Try what?’

Crawly gestures towards the tree. The Tree. _The_ Tree. ‘The fruit.’

‘Did I,’ says Aziraphale, ‘d- No! No, of course not!’

Crawly nods. ‘D’you want to?’

‘No!’ says Aziraphale, too fast and too loud. Crawly’s yellow eyes stare at him. His head tilts further.

‘I can bring you one,’ he says.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ says Aziraphale. He turns away.

‘All right,’ says the Serpent. ‘Ssssuit yourself.’

Aziraphale waits for Crawly to leave before turning to look at the Garden. The light’s gone from it, leached away as though Her will was the sole reason the sun kept shining. Maybe it was.

The Tree stands, beckoning richly and redly. Aziraphale considers it.

Adam, he thinks, Adam was obedient. He was given a plot to tend, and trusted that there was a reason. He was offered an apple, and he ate. He was offered a sword, and he took it.

It’s admirable, Aziraphale tells himself without conviction.

Yes, admirable. The First Man trusted in his place in the world. He trusted, and was content.

And he was kicked out of his home anyway.

Not that he’d ever made _use_ of it. Or thought to make use of it. He’d have sat, placidly, through the millennia, pacing out his Garden, lying down and getting up out of habit, scratching his arse when he felt like a change.

What would he have done with the Tree? Without Eve there?

Presumably there was a reason She waited to make Eve before She even bothered with the Tree.

What, after all, was even the point of the Tree without someone to eat from it?

Something too much of this, Aziraphale tells himself. Eve was tempted, and tempted Adam in turn.

Crawly tempted Eve.

Crawly offered Aziraphale the Fruit.

Which is … In principle, there’s no reason that Aziraphale can’t have the Fruit. She never said anything about Aziraphale not having the Fruit. Aziraphale could gorge himself on the Fruit without let or hindrance, day in and day out, without it being …

But would Crawly offer at all, if it weren’t … why would he, if it weren’t …

It _must_ be wrong, surely, if …?

Yes, decides Aziraphale. It is. A subtle, serpentine demonic wile. Aziraphale will resist. He will be stalwart and vigilant.

Unless, of course, that’s what the Serpent _wants_.

Which…

Aziraphale’s function, by construction and definition, is to thwart the Serpent in his commissioning of acts of … well, in the interests of concision, let’s call them evil.

And it stands to reason that he would be somewhat … hamstrung … in this endeavour, without _intimate_ knowledge of good and evil.

Maybe the test was whether Aziraphale would see through the Serpent’s stratagem.

Maybe this was the Plan all along.

Aziraphale reaches up for the Fruit. It bends from its bough, dropping into his palm with a little sigh.

The skin is taut and crisp. It resists just enough that the crack of Aziraphale’s teeth through its defences makes him glow with a sense of victory. The fruit itself is sweet and sharp and clear, like a mountain stream or the skies after rain.

Aziraphale’s lashes brush against the skin of the Fruit. He opens his eyes and examines the marks his teeth have made, neat and precise against the peel. He raises the Fruit to his lips again.

When he has finished, he considers. He feels no different, he thinks. No great swell of shame, or fear, or guilt, or –

Well, he _wouldn’t_ feel guilt, he tells himself. He saw through the adversary’s tricks and foiled them. There’s no reason at all for him to feel guilt.

A modicum of pride, even, might be expected in the circumstances.

Well, not expected, perhaps.

Forgivable?

Not that Aziraphale feels pride, of course. No, of course not.

He doesn’t feel much of anything, really.

Maybe this one was defective?

He reaches again. The Fruit sways down again, pressing confidingly into his hand.

Riverwater, pure and clear. Midsummer, soft breezes, the flapping of his gown by his ankles, fingers trailing through stalks of wheat.

They’ll know these things now, thinks Aziraphale, Adam and Eve. They will know scythes, and whinnows, and callouses, and seasons, and high, and low. They will know fruition, and loss, and pain, they will have escapes, and sometimes they will not, they will have lessons.

He reaches for another fruit, but it sways out of reach.

No matter.

He turns away from the Tree. He sees strawberries growing, in the Garden’s eternal spring. He puts one to his lips. He runs his tongue carefully over every pucker and groove. He watches his teeth bite down, and laughs as the juice runs down his chin.

This taste is different, he realises. This taste is bursting and young.

He finds asparagus, and runs his fingertip over the delicate spear. He coaxes a spider to alight on his hand and weave her web about his fingers. He holds the breath he doesn’t need to take as he watches. He feels like a giant. He feels as fragile as the web.

The grass bends underfoot as he walks. Aziraphale doesn’t know if his feet touch the ground now, or if they always did and he never realised. He looks over his shoulder, and the grass straightens itself, blade by blade, after he passes.

He doesn’t thirst, which is a shame. As he scoops water in his palms and down his throat, he thinks it might have been sweeter if his throat were dry.

He gathers berries in his palms. He eats them, one by one, carefully. Each alights differently on his tongue: sweet, sharp, nose-wrinkling, lip-pursing, explosive, careless, sedate, wanton, spiteful.

He knits together fig-leaf and dock-leaf. He takes off his robes and lies down. Against his skin they feel cool and secret.

He closes his eyes and listens.

He thinks everything comes to him in a whisper, a delay, an abstraction.

He turns onto his side, and realises that he can bring to mind what a strawberry was, and what was an apple, he has words for what he felt when he ate them, but no more. He can’t call them instantly, sharply and immediately, nownownow, to his tongue. He, for whom memory is simply an instantaneous and entire immersion in the totality of the moment. He, for whom time is a theoretical concept, must rely on memory.

He thinks of Adam and Eve. Of the great heavy, heady weight of knowingness that pressed them to earth after they ate the Fruit.

Did they taste riverwater, he wonders. And he wonders: Why would cloudbursts and mountain streams and summer make them feel guilt or shame?

‘So you did it,’ a voice remarks.

Aziraphale’s head snaps around as he stares at the Serpent.

Guilt, he thinks. There it is.

‘I – I don’t know what you mean,’ he says.

The Serpent tilts its head. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I came into the Garden,’ says Aziraphale, ‘to – to see if there was anything I needed to, that needed t – tending, I - ’

‘There’s juice on your chin,’ says the Serpent, not even bothering to hiss. Aziraphale’s hand darts for the fig-leaf and dabs ineffectually at his face.

‘You were eating,’ says the Serpent, ‘I was watching you.’

There’s something in its tone. Aziraphale thinks it might be gloating, but that’s not it. The Serpent sounds … arrested. There’s something in its voice that reminds Aziraphale of his own alarmed fumble for the fig-leaf. The tone is one of an admission.

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, ‘well, it – they’re gone now, poor things, and I wouldn’t want Her creation to go to waste, would I, I only wanted to - ’

‘Don’t mind me,’ says the Serpent, ‘go on.’

Aziraphale stares at the Serpent, who doesn’t stare back.

He shouldn’t, thinks Aziraphale. The Serpent wants him to.

And then he thinks, the Serpent wants him to.

He reaches for the plum and lifts it to his lips.

There’s a rustle, swift and sudden, aborted just as suddenly. For all the world as if the Serpent were moving closer and then remembered itself.

Aziraphale shuts his eyes. He’s not sure whether he does it to spare himself or the Serpent.

His teeth sink into the tender, yielding flesh of the fruit. The juice spurts across his mouth, down his chin. He lets it, letting late summer and the melancholy of solstices past and shortening days wash over him.

He feels the Serpent’s eyes on him. He thinks it’s lucky they neither of them need to breathe, because he thinks they’ve both forgotten how.

He thinks, this I will not forget.

He opens his eyes and looks across at the Serpent, who doesn’t look away in time.

There’s juice on Aziraphale’s chin. He leaves it there.

He thinks of the Fruit, and wonders what would happen if he tried it now.

He thinks he might try water again, now that he knows what thirst might feel like.

He thinks, maybe what I needed was to be watched.

In Paris and Madina, in Singapore and Rome, in Tuscany and Zanzibar and Cuzco and Beijing, in Tangiers and Calcutta, Aziraphale will taste. Honey and cardamom and chilli, boar and fowl and fish, sweet and bitter and umami. He will taste to try or to confirm or to deny.

He’s eaten in public. He’s eaten tête-à-tête. Once – as an experiment – he paid a man to watch him eat. The man was bored and puzzled, and Aziraphale was mortified, and he’s forgotten very thoroughly what he ate.

Since then – with very few, very specific, exceptions – he’s made a point of eating alone.

And some tastes he remembers better than others, and he’s getting better at remembering with practice.

But over linen or a banana leaf or a trencher, when he feels the weight of a deep yellow gaze on him as he lifts his hand to his lips, he knows that this? This he will not forget.

[1] In passing, Aziraphale’s always been struck that deceit is not one of the seven deadly sins. You’d think that it might be – that bristly Moses fellow made quite a point of telling his followers that She had expressly forbidden lying – but no. Which rather leads one to think that humanity, having decided it could live without lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, anger or pride, had decided it simply couldn’t be doing without the occasional fib.

[2] He hasn’t acquired the habit of lying to himself about the Serpent. Not yet, at least.

[3] Or forkèd tongue, even. Which is like forked but rather more so.


	2. Gluttony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale tastes Crowley, and is tasted by him.

The first time they kiss, there’s no pleasure in it.

Nor, really, should one look for it.

This is the difficulty with famine[1]. Six thousand years of wanting is – well, there’s a steadiness to it, a weight, a reassuring heft. You watch the tilt of a head or a wisp of hair blown across a mouth or a flicker of ingenuity or mirth and you swallow. You feel the spaces of lack and what-could-be and what-should-be and what-is-not, you feel them grow and press you from inside and outside until the want is all that shapes you: without the want from inside you would collapse in on yourself and without the lack from without you would explode. Magdeburg Hemispheres of Have-Not.

The equilibrium is delicate, a quiveringly fragile ecosystem that the merest breath could destroy.

A kiss is not a breath.

A kiss is a wrecking ball, a meteor strike, and nobody expects to enjoy a meteor strike.

Crowley’s mouth is hot on the corner of Aziraphale’s. He starts. Feels Crowley’s shaking indrawn breath. Swallows. Waits. Reorients. Finds Crowley’s lips and presses in – urgently, impatiently, the thing is to get there, they’ll work out later what they do when they reach – his lips on Crowley’s.

Crowley’s glasses press painfully against his cheek. He fumbles for them, taking care not to move his mouth.

Crowley’s lashes. Aziraphale can feel them, distinct and jittery, like moths’ wings beating against a bell jar. He gasps against Crowley’s mouth.

His lips. Aziraphale can find them now. Can identify them, could set a compass by them. Crowley’s lips, Aziraphale has known them once, has plunged into the pitiless churning waters, gasped at the shock of impact, set his teeth against the bracing mountain stream, found his footing and rubbed his arms.

Now? Now Aziraphale can explore.

He starts methodically. Top left first, a gentle press of lip to lip. Firmer, then, more decision. He moves his lips against Crowley’s, he brushes his mouth to and fro. Crowley’s mouth has quadrants and Aziraphale reconnoitres them all. There are layers, there are contours, there are topographical features and snares, and Aziraphale learns them, every pucker and fold.

Crowley is trembling beneath Aziraphale’s hands, his breath coming in hot quick puffs against his cheek. Aziraphale’s hands tighten, one on his shoulder, the other on his waist. There’s a pulse beating, he can feel it.

Crowley wants to melt. He wants to stay, and he wants to flee.

‘My dear,’ he says, and opens his eyes. He brushes the thin cheek under his nose. Crowley shivers.

‘I,’ says Crowley, and licks his lips. He catches Aziraphale’s mouth and shivers again.

‘What is it?’ says Aziraphale, and rests his thumb against that miraculously plump bottom lip. Crowley swallows.

‘So much,’ says Crowley, ‘ssssso much.’

‘Too much?’ says Aziraphale, because it could be, couldn’t it, too much, not enough, who knows what enough is or means or even looks like.

Crowley shakes his head violently, dislodging Aziraphale’s thumb. His eyes fly to Aziraphale’s, a lambent yellow flash, before they screw themselves shut. He leans into Aziraphale’s touch but beneath his hands he can feel the shift and slide of muscles and sinew turning into scales and rippling skin.

Oh, my darling, he thinks, gripping more surely, this is why you should have eaten the oysters when I offered them to you. Or the salmon, or the quail, or the crepes, or the _millefeuille_, or anything at all. All those lunches and dinners, my dear, you watched me, you studied me, but what did you think I was doing? You should have let me teach you _how_ to eat. Gluttony is an art, like anything else, my sweet. I do it exceptionally well.

‘Ssshhhhh,’ he murmurs against Crowley’s temple, ‘I have you.’

He feels Crowley quiver and attempt a snort. ‘I,’ he says, ‘I have _you_.’

‘Of course, my dear,’ says Aziraphale. He lets his fingers trail down to Crowley’s wrist, pulse hammering beneath the skin. ‘You have me.’

He lifts Crowley’s hand and lets it curve his cheek. He turns to press a kiss to the inside of that fine wrist. He lets his eyes lift to Crowley’s, half-hidden beneath drooping lids.

‘You have me,’ he says and kisses the rise of that thin high cheek. ‘You have me,’ and he nibbles at Crowley’s bottom lip. ‘You have me,’ and he licks Crowley’s chin.

Aroma is important, reflects Aziraphale, running his nose along the seam of Crowley’s lips. Aroma is the first greeting, the primal bond. Crowley smells of earth and pith and The Pit, of blasted oaks and summer lightning, of copper and old leather – not book-binding leather, not the smell at Aziraphale’s own fingertips, but the leather of Crowley’s car-seats.

He takes Crowley’s fingers and lifts them to his nose. He sniffs delicately, tightening his hold on Crowley’s wrist as he twitches. ‘My dear,’ he murmurs in reproof and Crowley whimpers softly. At Crowley’s fingertips Aziraphale thinks he smells steering wheels and door handles. Always on the outside, always speeding away.

Not anymore, thinks Aziraphale, not now. Not now I have you. Not now I’ve _let_ myself have you.

He lowers his nose to Crowley’s palm, nuzzles the soft curve there. Blows lightly against the tender skin and smiles at Crowley’s gasp. Mouths at his wrist, drawing the fine skin between his teeth.

‘Angel,’ says Crowley, his fingers tightening convulsively in Aziraphale’s hair. Oh, yes, thinks Aziraphale, letting his head be pulled back. Like that, my darling, how can you taste if you do not take?

Texture, thinks Aziraphale, flexing his fingers against the skin of Crowley’s waist. Firm, soft, and there, there, ribs piercing the skin, hot secret curve of the spine, in and out, sweat welling up under the skin. Aziraphale will push Crowley down onto the bed, nose at his spine, soothe his trembling serpent, lick up the sweat at the base, just where those long bony legs begin, the legs Crowley operates as though he’s still a snake, something sinuous and strange, as though an extravagant glide were the only way to walk and everyone else is doing it wrong, oh, yes…

Crowley’s lashes, now, beating against Aziraphale’s throat. Delicate and fragile, like hummingbirds, urgent and erratic against his skin. Crowley’s fingers are clenching and unclenching in the hair at Aziraphale’s neck. If Aziraphale lets his own hand slide to Crowley’s neck, to that little dip at the base of his skull where the hair is short and thick and springy and slides through his fingers…

Crowley breathes out against Aziraphale’s neck. His chest rises and falls as Aziraphale strokes his fingers through his hair. Gently, so gently, moving against the grain, rubbing his knuckles in tiny concentric circles, listening to Crowley with his fingers and his skin.

He nudges Crowley’s head up a little, just enough that he can open his mouth against his temple. So thin, the skin here, fine vein beating under Aziraphale’s lips and the slightest graze of his teeth.

‘’s me,’ mumbles Crowley, and Aziraphale nudges him with his cheek and chin so Crowley’s lips rest comfortably against his ear.

‘Kiss me,’ says Crowley, softly, and then clamps down on Aziraphale’s hair, keeping his head immobile when he threatens to rear back to look properly. ‘Kiss me,’ he says, with a wavering stab at command. ‘Kisssss me.’

‘Of course,’ says Aziraphale, penitent, how impolite of him to make his darling ask, ‘of _course_.’

The inside of Crowley’s mouth is lush and wet and delicately sweet, like a freshly-peeled lychee. His tongue lies panting against Aziraphale’s, nimble and swift. He is every draught of beer Aziraphale has watched disappear down the throat of a farmhand in midsummer. His teeth graze Aziraphale’s tongue as he presses in.

‘Mmmmmm,’ says Aziraphale, letting his hands slide and rub and touch. Skin and bone, muscle and sinew, slipping and sliding and wet and firm and yielding. Crowley whimpers against his lips, and the vibrations make Aziraphale shiver.

‘You taste,’ says Aziraphale, detaching himself to suck in the breath he doesn’t need, just to watch the tiny hairs at Crowley’s temple flutter as he breathes out, ‘my dear, you taste …’

He sucks Crowley’s lip into his mouth. Rosehip and mango leaf and Venus Flytrap. It glistens with angelic spit when he pulls away and he sighs pridefully. He bends back, nibbles gently. Feels Crowley quiver. Passes a hand up and down his trembling flank. Lets his fingertips graze the skin at his waist. Kisses his way across his jaw, along his chin, up, up to his ear. Velvet, he thinks, and tiger lilies. When he bites the lobe, Crowley shies and Aziraphale starts away, alarmed.

‘Should I…?’

Crowley shakes his head. Bares his throat and the curve of his ear again. Tries a smile, tries to bare his teeth. His eyes are wide and wanting and terrified. They seek Aziraphale’s and flutter shut.

Aziraphale brushes a kiss across each eyebrow in turn. Gnaws lightly at the tip of that sharp sharp nose. The skin tastes different here[2], as it does over Crowley’s cheekbone[3], as it does at the corner of his mouth[4], or underneath his jaw[5], and with every breath Crowley takes, every time he turns his head or hisses out a plea he tastes different, and Aziraphale can lick and suck and nibble, and he has a dizzying compendium of very precise similes for the taste and smell of every inch he’s covered, and every single one of them was true, but he knows, he knows that the next time he licks Crowley’s eyelid he will taste something that is close to, but is not quite, tea and biscuits on a Sunday afternoon in Piccadilly with the smell of coconut macaroons that Aziraphale will not have just yet but will go back to taste.

And I haven’t even touched his shoulders yet, thinks Aziraphale giddily. Or his thighs. Or his toes. Or his bollocks. Or his arms.

He could take his time, he thinks. Devote an entire year (really, what’s a year?) each to:

  1. The back of Crowley’s right knee. Velvet, secret and tender, marbled blue-green. Maybe he’s _ticklish_ Maybe a light breath to the back of a knee would make him whimper, and the pressure of a thumb would make him keen. Maybe he tastes of Normandy pears there.
  2. The crook of his elbow. Sharp, sharpsharpsharp, like the rest of him, but naked and curious and vulnerable. Like the rest of him. Piercing his skin: Crowley’s never had enough skin, really, to protect the bone and the sinew and the everything of him, never enough to cover or insulate or keep safe from harm. Crowley’s a quivering exposed nerve, ganglions reaching out tremulous into the firmament. If Aziraphale puts his mouth to the skin over those overstretched places, he’d need to be careful to not tear it right off like the peel of a grape.
  3. The underside of his cock. Fine and warm and strong and tender. A year of sniffing and mouthing and sucking and licking and memorising each minute tremble and gradation of feel and taste and smell. To revel in the feel of Crowley’s long fingers in his hair, sliding and guiding and holding him off when it’s too close or too much or not enough or all three. And maybe Aziraphale might be permitted – might permit _himself_ – to run his fingertips along the back of Crowley’s thigh, or to squeeze one lovely high buttock, or to pinch and roll his bollocks while Crowley jackknifes over him. Or maybe Aziraphale might glance up to find Crowley’s head thrown back, and rise up to nibble at that exquisite bared throat. Maybe Aziraphale could roll that lovely slender length between his thighs, the way Havana virgins are meant to do with cigars[6]. Maybe Crowley could lick himself off Aziraphale’s arse and legs[7] and Aziraphale could kiss the taste from Crowley’s mouth[8].
  4. His ankle. The dainty curve of it, twinkling under her skirts while Aziraphale looked away, hot and pink and bottomlessly troubled. The self-assured sway of that high narrow hip, all of a piece with the sunglasses perched precisely five-sevenths of the distance down her nose. Aziraphale wanted to press his thumbs to that ankle, on either side. Study its elegant ironic circumflex, like a serious _chapeau_[9]. If he puts his mouth to it, it would lie atop his tongue like rock salt, robust and insistent and pink, mined from the Himalayas, crushed into sherpas’ food.
  5. The crevice of his arse. A year spent running the back of his knuckles along it, like a miner or a shaman. A year spent sniffing and probing and nibbling and licking, or worming out the precise musk and roil and eddies of brimstone and fire and an elegant, curious immensity[10]. Would he squirm when Aziraphale rubs his nose between his cheeks, the way he does when Aziraphale breathes hotly on the fragile skin between his fingers? What pleas, what sighs, what harsh gasps could Aziraphale wring from him if he bit down and then soothed the hurt with a kiss? A year spent learning when to flatten his tongue and when to point. A year spent learning how the angle of attack changes the flavour. A year exploring whether the clench and flutter of Crowley’s hole is quicker or sweeter when he’s on his back or when those lovely buttocks are high in the air. A year of permutations and combinations of thighs clamped around Aziraphale’s ears, or thumbs pressing lighter/harder/tighter, of whether Crowley could ejaculate[11] this way alone[12]. A year of thunder and sleeping volcanoes and silty riverbeds under his tongue, of ancient amniotic richness, of something deep and dangerous and delightful all at once. Or else something else altogether, something that would send Aziraphale into a glorious _furor_ to find new similes and new words of praise for, only to be deliciously foiled the next time he applied teeth and tongue and nose and lips and found that the feast laid out before him was something subtly anew. A year spent basking in it, bathing in it, rolling around in it in a paroxysm of appetite.

And perhaps, thinks Aziraphale, he will leave marks on Crowley: on his throat, or the inside of his elbow, or the little dip between his clavicles, or beneath his ear. Perhaps he will suckle, tenderly but so long, and Crowley will let out that high, wounded sound again.

He has time now. Time, and Crowley laid out in front of him, and –

It is at this point that Crowley’s fingers reach for Aziraphale’s cock, and Aziraphale’s thoughts run face-first into a more than usually unforgiving brick wall.

‘_Oh_,’ Aziraphale says.

Crowley’s fingers flit, nimble but unsure. ‘Can I - ?’

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, arching into his touch, ‘oh, oh, my dear, yes.’

Crowley’s mouth opens against Aziraphale’s throat. ‘Angel,’ he says, his tongue flicking against Aziraphale’s pulse. ‘Angel, I - ’

Aziraphale spreads his legs. Insinuates one of Crowley’s pale thin thighs between his two. Crowley’s gasp turns sharp, accusatory even. As though Aziraphale should have told him, should have _said_.

I should have, thinks Aziraphale, pulling Crowley closer, I should, I should, I should. But you, my sweet, my restless yellow-eyed sauntering temptation, all angles and impeccable style, you never ate, how could I have guessed you were capable of hunger?

How could I have known, he thinks, as Crowley’s fingers press and Aziraphale squirms closer still; as Crowley’s teeth peek out and graze Aziraphale’s pulse, singing obligingly for him; as his tongue swirls hotly over Aziraphale’s earlobe and Aziraphale is torn between crawling into Crowley and running to his bookshelf and barricading the door because there are at least five poems and three hymns that are blindingly, shatteringly clear to him now.

As is something else, thinks Aziraphale, as Crowley forages, trembling and inexact and inexpressibly dear, dismantling Aziraphale with every hesitant narrow-fingered brush. Something, in all Aziraphale’s breakfasts and second breakfasts and nuncheons and dinners and _après-ski**[13]**_, in all his adventures of taste and smell and feel, that his most grasping, parched imaginings could never have begun to articulate.

In all the thought Aziraphale has given to how Crowley might taste, he thinks, panting wetly into Crowley’s ear, he never dreamed what it might be like for Crowley to taste _him_. 

[1] And, quite possibly, with Famine.

[2] Orange peel in whisky

[3] A good Riesling

[4] Starlight

[5] Storms, precisely speaking late evening monsoon storms over Angkor Wat

[6] Legend, of course, has it that Cuban cigars are rolled between virgins’ thighs. This is because Legend is generally the work of more than usually excitable men. However, if Crowley wanted – if he but said the word – the _lanceros_ Aziraphale would roll for him! The leaves he would knead and shape between his rocking thighs, the _Coronas_ and _Julietas_ and _Canonazos_ he would offer up to his darling, the ways he could let Crowley take pleasure between his legs!

[7] Aziraphale wants to share, after all.

[8] Because Aziraphale may want to share, but he wants to taste as well.

[9] All _chapeaux_ are very serious, as a particular Irishman once told Aziraphale. Especially the ones that are not.

[10] Aziraphale is aware that there is likely a joke about Crowley’s penis to be made here, and he would rather not be interrupted, thank you very much.

[11] Crowley says, loftily, that Aziraphale ought really to get over himself and say ‘come’. Aziraphale privately thinks that this would be a lot more convincing if Crowley’s face when he says ‘come’ didn’t look like an explosion in the Heinz Tomato Ketchup factory.

[12] Which he could, of course. The question is how much concentrated efforta it would take.

a On Crowley’s part, that is. Aziraphale is willing – eager, even – to expend millennia of effort in bringing Crowley to orgasmb.

b Provided, that is, that he gets to seec.

c And also heard.

d And, obviously, taste.

[13] Aziraphale never, of course, quite got the hang of the actual ski part. The _après_, on the other hand…

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr handle is itsevidentvery, if you'd like to come yell with me there.
> 
> A handy-dandy rebloggable link is [here](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/187267832600/aziraphales-seven-deadly-sins) if you are so inclined!


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